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Monetizing Options: WoT Console’s Update 3.9

This will be another sort of ‘state of the community’ piece for World of Tanks Console, specifically regarding the latest update, 3.9, and the justifications behind the differences between the different platforms World of Tanks is supported on. Most of this is opinion, as always, but opinion based on observation and several interactions with WG staff over the past couple of days

With World of Tanks Console Editions latest update WarGaming Chicago-Baltimore finally introduced a long awaited (3 years) feature to the game: National Crew Voices. After years of teasing and reasons that they couldn’t be implemented we would finally be able to have our German and Russian crews stop sounding like an American action movie hero:

As long as you pay for it.

What was a free Audio Option check box on PC has now been monetized behind the general Crew Customization interface. At the time of this writing those options are fairly limited as well: as Czech voices are non-existent, and several nations options have their “customized” voices switch back to the player’s native language even after they have spent the Customization Voucher to change it, and some would argue that since players have received various amounts of free vouchers that this is ok, though with the amount of bugs, or missing options, it’s possible these were put in to allow a ‘test’ on the live server without players putting in money for them.

And frankly, those that are available and work don’t sound any better than what is available on PC, or in some cases horribly muffled.

Under different circumstances this may have been something that we could shrug our shoulders over and continue playing. However this is the latest in a long trend of trying to get every penny out of a dwindling playerbase. From charging extra gold on premium tanks for camouflage the player might not want, and can’t change (and flat out lying about when ‘standard’ options will be available), to bringing in a fourth camouflage pattern without adjusting pricing in any way (and which largely consists of repeated patterns with slight color changes, or copy/pasted across several nations). In short, console players have already been paying more for fewer options for several years now.

So how exactly does does this customization interface work? It’s essentially the same process as tank customization, and where you can alter the Commander portrait (for PC players, we don’t have a full crew), name, and voice (which can go beyond the default or national voice). All of this for 250 gold (or 100,000 silver during the promotion). PC players might find it funny that we have to pay 250 gold for what is essentially ONE crew member when the same price can allow you to customize five crew members, portraits and names. While players have received 10 vouchers (with an additional 10 for year played) this isn’t really much consolation for players who have been playing the longest and have amassed huge amounts of tanks and crews, and when those vouchers can easily be wasted on non-functioning voice changes and later corrections (one voucher covers each time you exit and save a change, so if you are to make an error in a name change, you will have to spend a new voucher to correct it).

Hopefully in the future the ridiculous cost can be mitigated with them being as rewards for operations, though WG admits they have no clue how this would really be implemented at the moment.

But none of this really addresses the key issue: Why was a free Audio Option on PC changed to monetized customization on Console?

Frankly I have no answer. Despite repeated requests in relevant forum threads and through PMs to the relevant WG staff I have yet to receive any answers beyond “it was an intentional design choice” and “it’s more versatile than PC’s option” as the only justification for monetizing what is essentially a free option on PC.

Many players have tried to justify this by saying WarGaming needs the money. Though as some have pointed out, if that was the case then why would they give out high tier premiums for nearly a year straight, with operations so easy that most players can accomplish them? Seems that if they were really strapped for cash they wouldn’t be so eager to practically give away one of their key money-makers. In addition to that and as I have already mentioned, we already pay more for customization than our PC counterparts (and in some cases pay more to NOT be able to customize). With WG hinting at further customization options in the future (such as tarps and bed rolls, “wiggly bits” as WG Chicago has dubbed them) there will be further sources of income in terms of actual customization in the future.

Some have argued that it may be a case of the console platform makers (Sony and Microsoft) imposing the monetization on all “customization” options. I honestly wanted to believe this and enquired about it several times to the available channels. The only response I received was

“Hello,

Your question has already been answered a couple of times. If you have a question about something else, feel free to ask.”

The answer I had received previously was the aforementioned “intentional design choice”, and even after further enquiry specifically asking about Sony or Microsoft involvement I have received no further answers.

So where exactly does that leave WoT Console? It’s hard to say. When the developers put a long requested feature behind a paywall, and after years of charging more money for fewer options than our PC counterparts, it truly does come off as greed on WarGaming Chicago’s part. If there is some other motive or reason other than that behind the decision, they aren’t bringing it up as of the time of this writing, instead preferring to let their most staunch supporters defend the decision behind suppositions, or vague allusions.

If anything new comes out in that regard, I’ll be quick to update, as I really had been hoping that this was the result of some factor beyond WG Chicago’s control, and even stalling writing in the hope that something would come up. For the time being though, it’ll appear as blatant disrespect to long time players, and those aware of how other WarGaming titles operate. After a year of questionable balance decisions, price hikes for “cool” looking premiums, and the moves towards pay-to-win premium tanks (and not even those brought over from PC), in addition to month long sound engine bugs and some unresolved log-in issues for PS4 players, it seems there is very little to get excited about as WarGaming continues to put profit over player relations and crafting a good and functioning title.

As always, I’m eager to hear your opinions regarding the matter, through polls and the comments sections, and regardless of platform you play on, as the decisions of one dev team inform those for others. What do you guys think? Should WG (Console specifically) be more transparent about their decision making? And was the move to monetize a free feature on PC a good one?

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51 comments on “Monetizing Options: WoT Console’s Update 3.9”

As long as it does not affect the statistics of a vehicle I’m all for it. I think this is the best possible way of monetizing the game because you pay for a better experience while on the same level playing field.

right, we did ask for national crew voices, but we didn’t ask for this money making scheme bs. We wanted the toggle button in the settings like PC. Honestly this will be where i stop with console because I have a great PC now and my console is basically busted POS now because the lan port went bad on me and wifi doesn’t cut it. This was just a stupid decision overall and it makes me believe more stupid monetization schemes will be coming soon. Console plebs are stupid and will fall for this super hard.

The operations are basically “kill this many tanks” a few times over till you earn the premium. Its not the same as the Personal Missions on PC. Also, we only have the T28 HTV, which was sold a premium rather than being earnable for good players

The not getting what you paid for is ileagl and charaging for bad voices is fine, as long it you get the voices. Although I would pay for brittish voices in all my tanks, but not for each tank. Looks like you’re in shit creak with nae paddle

You guys are taking this too far. The primary issue here is that PC has national crew voices for free and Console players have wanted that same feature for years. The anger over a surprise paywall for something they have wanted for a long time is perfectly understandable, but just step back and look at the implementation.

They have stuck it in as part of the crew customization that PC has had for a while now, which besides the monetary reasoning, is a neat idea that allows you to change language on a per-crew basis rather than simply being stuck with the crew’s original nationality. It works and makes sense, as in “an intentional design choice” that fits in perfectly where they’ve put it. This of course means more people paying to use the crew customization feature which I can’t imagine getting used much on PC (I sure don’t use it), but changing the crew’s voice really makes sense as part of this system. Again it’s just a matter of people’s expectations from the PC version getting in the way.

And on the subject of changes to the PC system, choosing to customize a crew also lets you change their gender and give them whatever name you like, unlike PC where female crews are rather limited and you choose names from a list.

Yes, it costs 250 Gold at the very most to change all of this at once, which is how much it costs to customize a five-person crew on PC (50 Gold each). But you don’t necessarily ever even have to pay that much. For one thing there’s everyone getting up to 40 “vouchers” for free at the start depending on how long you’ve been playing, with an additional 10 added every future time you reach an additional year’s anniversary in the game. Then there are the Store bundles that only cost Silver, so you can grab as many as you like. They are of course going to leave the Store before the end of the month, but WG has made it a point to say that these Crew Vouchers are going to be used as Operation rewards as well as have them on sale again periodically. You will have plenty of opportunities to grab them for free, and if you have an intense burning need to immediately customize every single crew in your Garage for some reason, then that’s where WG hopes to make some money. If you don’t pay for it then fine, because I won’t either, and we will simply be waiting a bit longer for the free ones. You know, just like with Premium time and the various currency conversions. You pay and your life gets easier. This is nothing new.

And for one more thing, this really is the kind of customization that should be monetized, rather than stuff that affects gameplay as we typically have in World of Tanks. Seriously, it’s purely cosmetic stuff that barely anyone will ever see. The kind of thing that other respectable games typically use exclusively for their microtransactions.

Also the polls at the end were kind of pointless loaded questions. Like, who would be against free stuff and WG transparency?

This isn’t only about the implementation of national crew voices (though that is the main focus and the catalyst for me writing this article) but how this is just the latest in a long line ways WG Chicago have tried squeezing cash out of their players (who already pay more for statistically identical premiums, tank customization, on top of online memberships for Xbox players) and their complete lack of respect regarding player inquiries.

They have taken some of the worst aspects of PC, such as pay-to-win Premium Tanks and questionable balance changes, and added even more questionable practices while hoping the occasional freebie would buy players silence (especially considering that the players who have been around the longest are going to have far more than the free vouchers will ever cover, and those can easily be wasted do to errors and bugs with the setup as it is right now).

If it was just down to national crew voices, it wouldn’t be an issue, but considering that WG have gone out of their way to charge more money in the past in the ways I have detailed, and will continue to do so, it is an unbelievably bad move on their part. Especially for something that is free on other platforms.

If I had to choose between WG spamming pay2win OP tanks and selling them for big amounts of money ; and WG spamming useless customization features and hiding them behind a paywall… Well needless to say I support the second option more.
I would much rather have to pay for national crew voices (which means not having to pay at all since its useless), than having to pay for competitive tanks or getting my ass handed to me by players with bigger wallets (which very rarely translates to a bigger brain).

That being said, I do not agree with making players pay on one platform for a feature that exists for free on another platform. Simply because its not fair, and I doubt the chicago team had to put any effort into adding this option since all the hard work (actualy getting these voices) was done before, so they should not have to ask for money for it.

To be fair the only kinds of paid content that would be okay would be :
-premium accounts (pay2progress faster, but it wont make you have an advantage on others)
-camo’s and special skins (but thus remove the camouflage bonus so its not pay2win)
-premium tanks (as long as they’re inferior or as good as their regular equivalent)
This way the game would set itself at the same level as other successful games full of microtransactions : you pay for faster progress (like in almost every MMO) or aesthetic changes (many MMOs have skins as their only paid content). No advantage over free users except not having to wait as long for end game experience, and having a game looking the way you want it to.

Of course even if just eye candy, some features are so essential to the game that making them a paid feature is just out of the question. I am thinking mostly about HD maps and tanks for PC. This is not just decorative, this changes the whole gameplay experience.

Crew Voices are in between. They could be considered a base feature that needs to be free. But at the same time you can totaly play without them, and personnaly I think making players pay for national voices would not be a big deal IF ALL PLATFORMS MADE THE SAME CHOICE.
Either everyone pays, or nobody pays. Having it free on one platform and paid on another is unfair and disrespectful of the players.

deco dont be making assumptions when you dont know the full story… the reasoning behind the crew voices being a paid option.. is simply because of microsoft and sony.. you want further details maybe you should ask WG yourself instead of going out and spreading lies… Fact check yourself man.. thats why many people disregard your opinion…

Impatient much? quit crying.. hardly anyone respects you and it’s a wonder why you were even allowed to make posts here… i could easily name 20 people better for their opinion on WoT console who actually care and take the time to get all their info from the source instead of spreading bs and lies… I honestly hope rita reads this.. and hope she removes you.. and if she doesnt oh well.. i’ll just keep reminding her and you of how bad you are at spreading lies…

I get it, you like the game and think WG are probably your buddies or something of that sort. Its fine, but its no excuse to silence legitimate criticism, especially when a fair number of people stand behind that criticism (yes, even Rita, who actually encouraged me to write this article after watching WG staff on the forums).

Understand, this all comes from my passion for the game and an honest desire to see it be the best it can be, and I don’t believe cheap moves like what WG have done here will do that, instead it will only alienate long-time players more than they are already.

And as I clearly wrote in the article, if news of Sony/MS comes from anybody in a position to know that sort of thing, I will make an update. As of now though, all we have is WG’s refusal to discuss the matter.

I think it’s perfectly exceptable. The console customization options are better than the PC imo for a few reasons. You can create your own names instead of picking one from a drop down menu ( my best German crew is named Hand Gruber), you can switch any crew from male to female ( switched my 53/55 crew to female and named her Carrie Butthurt), and you can make any nation speak any language ( my Bat Chat is named Ninja Assassin and speaks Japanese). You add in the fact that you bet a bunch for free, more for free later, as many as you want for silver, and if that’s not enough the gold price is only 250 ( the same as putting one type of camo on a tier 10 tank). Considering all that I think the console rolled this out in grand fashion! I’m not saying WG console is perfect ( still waiting on my render range indicator) but this is not one of those times where I think they failed by any means.

As I’ve stated before, if this was a one off deal this would be a non-issue. However after pushing customizations that affect gameplay (Urban camo) and artificially inflating premium tank prices with permanent camo (that can’t be swapped out) and never releasing cheaper alternatives, and not counting the usual tactics from PC (pay-to-win/powercreep Premium tanks), it appears to be less of a attempt at “giving players something” and more an attempt to squeeze pennies out of the playerbase.

And as a secondary point, all of this could have been avoided if WG staff was at all responsive to inquiries.

It appears that way to you, as does everything WG does to earn income apparently. You insist on looping everything positive and negative into one group of negative. You have a legitimate gripe with some of the power creeped premiums, it is something that needs to be addressed. Yes, some of the newest offerings are inflated with useless stuff and overpriced, even if some of the tanks themselves were earnable for free. The new customization options though are not one of those things that are a detriment to the game. They have no effect on gameplay and are in no way out of reach behind expensive pay walls. Your opinions seem to always be skewed to the negative. Your posts are always skewed as well as the polls that follow.

And to your second point, I had to read through five pages of you acting like an entitled, petulant child the other day with multiple WG staff responding to you on multiple occasions so saying they aren’t at all responsive isn’t true. You may not like the answers your given but you were given answers. You act as though the heads of WG, after all they’re meeting and debates on how to roll this out, followed by them taking a few days or weeks to personally think it over and come to a decision, owe you an explanation as to all the pros and cons they weighed and what ultimately caused them to come to the decision they came to. As if the admins are suppose to walk into thier bosses bosses office and demand it because Deco is on the forums and won’t take anything less for an answer.

Common sense would dictate that if you’re going to roll out something thats free on an identical title on another platform you might want an explanation handy, especially if it is do to third-party details, and when previous decisions haven’t gone over well.

And sir, if my inquiries come off as ‘petulant’ I highly suggest finding another blog to read. When somebody asks if Sony/Microsoft are involved in this development and gets “it was intentional” and “it’s customization”, thats not answering the question I asked. Sorry if that somehow isn’t clear enough.

The game titles are the same, but the customization options are not. The console includes more and is part of more detailed system so I see no problem putting those options together under one roof so to speak.

Also, two days ago you said quote ” Is that a gold/credit price to customize your crew? Clarify that please. I might understand it if it affected gameplay like the tank camo does” yet here you use that same camo price as an example of a WG money grab in defense of your argument against being charged for this feature. Which is it? You can’t play both sides of the coin depending on which one fits the argument your putting forward at the moment. Are you ok with paying gold to effect the stats/performance of your tanks but not for things that don’t effect gameplay? I think customization that doesn’t effect gameplay is exactly the type of thing they should be monetizing, not the other way around.

That was written in a state of complete disbelief over what they had done. Not playing both sides as you insinuate.

As I have stated before, if this was an isolated thing, I wouldn’t mind. If they never bundled crew voices with Customization, I wouldn’t mind. If they didn’t increase the price of customizations that DO affect gameplay, I wouldn’t mind.

But its just the last in a line of moves to squeeze money out of players.

“That is how f2p titles works 🙁 Barely dev team is able to spend lot of time doing things for free. I believe they`d like to join creative process without any restrictions, but the project won`t live long life that way.
​We understand that many players expected national voices for free as it was free on PC. That is why vouchers and silver bundles here. Instead of having only national crew voices for free you are able to customize crew gender, face, name for free or using silver.”

Also, this is just one of many answers that WG gave you two days ago in the above mentioned thread. I hardly call that unresponsive or “it was intentional” or “it’s customization” as you describe thier response.

Man I never thought I would see the “we love wg” circlejerk but you brought it out with this article. lol Everyone should be agreeing that charging for national crew voices is bad and charging for cosmetic crew looks and names is okay but here we have people actually DEFENDING a shitty wg tactic. lol WTF.

Just to say, the same money milking wouldn’t go well on PC at least without extreme changes to the game engine. If WG would put the national crew voices behind paywall it would be only a question of “how many hours?” it takes for someone to do some datamining and extraction and (at least how much I know about coding (3D and game desing/monetization guy) and how much I have dug into the BigWorld-engine that WG uses) coding a nice sideloading app (like XVM) to make national crew voices free for everyone interested and, with a lot more work, even a tank based crew voices a possibility. Acctually already it wouldn’t be that hard to datamine something like female voices or Rudy voices from the game and change the national voices with them and probably that would be okay for WG, because even if they wouldn’t like it, there’s no way without player uploading a video or something to the internet to WG know about it.

To counter that WG would need to make a drastic change in how people can mod the WoT on PC (at this moment it’s completely okay to make your tanks look like a christmas trees through changing their 3D models and textures and you can even make textures to show where are the weak spots and crew/modules in enemy tanks, only really illegal mods are things that datamine server side statistics, AI controlled mods (like bots, auto-aim and so on) and other extreme gameplay changing mods). Quite well meaning they would even need to kill the modding community making it extremely hard and/or moderated to the level of North-Korea. And probably still they couldn’t stop people from modding the game on the client side (graphic and sound changes) and to counter that they would need to make some kind of file verification system and that would effect the user experience a lot (think about something like taking 1/100th to 1/10th of downloading the whole game everytime you start it).

But that doesn’t help a lot console players out there since as far as I know, you cannot mod the console WoT at all.

Acctually I would like to see WG to move towards milking money with vanity stuff rather than the todays premium tank monetization. Would be so much easier for them to make the games milk money with stuff that really doesn’t affect the gameplay.

For example, making the crew voices and crew customization cheap but still profitable doesn’t really change the game, it’s vanity stuff that gives the whale some extra joy. making a ton of emblems and logos and allowing players to add them as much as their wallets can wouldn’t change the game a bit, except give some the joy of customizing their tanks and other giggles when someone has spend money to customize their tank. making a anime tank that is extremely unblanaced (Nameless) changes the game a lot and affects the balance really much in a long run (as we have now seen with Defender, Patriot and Chrysler) and causes kind of snowball effect where they even need to start to nerf the premiums or buff the non-premiums to make them competetive against the premiums.

Of course people rather pay their left leg, a nut and kidney for a OP tank than get some vanity stuff, but with vanity stuff the game can never be P2W. Of course PC players (those with the needed skills) are always going to mod the heck out of the game, but that is what you get when you publish your game to PC (same thing as games getting cracked and pirated, it’s not a can question, it’s a when question). But it’s just so much more healthier for a extremely competetive game to differentiate whales from F2P players with skins and models than try to give the whales some extra performance for the money they use.

As a PC player I would really when ever exchange all of the unbalanced premium tanks and the magical “skill”-key for a vanity stuff like national crew voices. Hell, take away the whole modding support and make us pay for even to see the faces of our tank crew, just take away those god damn P2W anime tanks.

I’m a huge light tanker, and the new map is absolutely glorious fun for fast flankers and the smaller, stealthier TDs. There are virtually no corridors but still enough cover for heavies to use without just getting stuck in the open. I personally think it is the best map the console version has at the moment.

“That is how f2p titles works 🙁 Barely dev team is able to spend lot of time doing things for free. I believe they`d like to join creative process without any restrictions, but the project won`t live long life that way.
​We understand that many players expected national voices for free as it was free on PC. That is why vouchers and silver bundles here. Instead of having only national crew voices for free you are able to customize crew gender, face, name for free or using silver.”

Again, that is one of many public explanations given to you personally in public forums. I can’t speak to the multiple private responses, but I’m sure you’ve gotten them as you said you’ve been at it for the two days since this one.

I don’t know what WG has done to you to make every post a knife fight. Did they run over your dog? Did Raibot steal your cat? Whatever it was you should start every post with ” Hi, my name’s Deco, and my favorite flavor is salty. Let me tell you about it.”

Na na na boob boo doesn’t cut it here. lol console devs got greedy and are being told i.e. feedback that it was not acceptable to charge money for something free on another platform. Retail stores spend money to make sure all their stores look and function exactly alike. WG should be doing the same with their games. Its called managing expectations and not starting a riot. lol Paingod knew charging for national crew voices would start a riot. He is hoping it will just blow over after awhile.

Ask Viktor Kilsyi, before he started WG and when he was a nobody back then, what he thinks about his favorite local restaurant charging? :
– a separate fee for air conditioning (if any),
– a separate fee for just table seating
– an extra service fee just because waitress was cute
– a separate fee for use of utensils
– a service fee for the cleaning

Would he then? :
– sit outside
– serve himself
– bring his own plate, fork and spoon
– cleans up himself

You have a choice, pay for something or don’t?
You want it pay for it. If you don’t like what they are doing to the game stop supporting it.
There are enough issues for you to actually whine about something important.

Deco is right it is not just about having to pay for crew customization, it has to do with what the have been doing since early 2016. They don’t address any of the questions or concerns from the player base when it comes to, balance, bug fixs or why they make the decisions they do. I have sent PMs that never got a proper response. If this issue was the first thing to have happened people would not be this upset, but after last years black friday fiasco, and the high prices of premiums of the last year it feels like they gouging the players a lot.

I was excited at the thought of someone writing on here to represent the console side of the game, but so far it’s been pretty lackluster, the focus has been on extremely mundane issues, forum moderation? crew voices? are there not currently more important things wrong with the game.